Since Forbes hired me in 1995 to write a legal column, I’ve taken advantage of the great freedom the magazine grants its staff, to pursue stories about everything from books to billionaires. I’ve chased South Africa’s first black billionaire through a Cape Town shopping mall while admirers flocked around him, climbed inside the hidden chamber in the home of an antiquarian arms and armor dealer atop San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill, and sipped Chateau Latour with one of Picasso’s grandsons in the Venice art museum of French tycoon François Pinault. I’ve edited the magazine’s Lifestyle section and opinion pieces by the likes of John Bogle and Gordon Bethune. As deputy leadership editor, these days I mostly write about careers and corporate social responsibility. I got my job at Forbes through a brilliant libertarian economist, Susan Lee, whom I used to put on television at MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. Before that I covered law and lawyers for journalistic stickler, harsh taskmaster and the best teacher a young reporter could have had, Steven Brill.

Don't Fire An Employee And Leave Them In Charge Of The Corporate Twitter Account

Yesterday HMV, the beleaguered British entertainment retailer, laid off 190 employees, in an effort to cut costs and right its balance sheet. The company apparently pulled a large group into human resources and gave them the bad news. While this was going on, one employee, Poppy Rose, who had been an HMV community manager and thus had access to the corporate Twitter account, started live tweeting about the layoffs.

Over a period of around 20 minutes, she sent out a series of notes expressing her rising sense of alarm to HMV’s 61,500 followers (that number has since risen to 73,350). Rose admitted that it was unusual to use the company Twitter feed to express her views, but, she wrote, “when the company you dearly love is being ruined,” she felt it was justified. “There are over 60 of us being fired at once!” she wrote. “Mass execution, of loyal employees who love the brand.”

One of the most entertaining tweets that came through before HMV took back the account and deleted the offending tweets: “Just overheard our marketing director (he’s staying, folks) ask ‘How do I shut down Twitter?’”

After she stopped tweeting on the HMV feed, Rose continued to tweet on her own account, @poppy_powers, using a hashtag she created while tweeting on the HMV account, #hmvXFactorFiring. She explained that she had worked as an intern at HMV and in that job, had been responsible for the company’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. Because she is single and has no kids or mortgage, she wrote that she felt she was in a unique position to speak out.

On her own account, Rose also wrote about how the company never quite grasped what her job entailed. “I wanted to show the power of Social Media to those who refused to be educated,” she tweeted. “Just to set something straight, I did not ‘hijack’ the hmv twitter account. I actually assumed sole responsibility of Twitter & Facebook over two years ago, as an intern. When asked (this afternoon), I gladly provided the password to head office. I also set another member of staff up as a manager on Facebook, and removed myself from the admin list. I didn’t resist any requests to cooperate.”

What seems shocking is that HMV didn’t realize ahead of time that it had left the power of its social media accounts in the hands of a young woman it was letting go. The blunder could have something to do with the fact that consulting firm Deloitte has been running HMV while the company attempts to restructure. Deloitte and HMV did not comment on the Twitter fiasco. Instead Deloitte released a statement that said, “Since our appointment as Administrators over two weeks ago, we have been assessing the financial position of HMV.” Deloitte also confirmed that HMV had laid off 190 people.

Later in the day, this tweet came through the HMVaccount: “One of our departing colleagues was understandably upset. We’re still here thou, thx for supporting hmv thro these challenging times.”

But as recently as eight hours ago, according to a tweet on Rose’s account, she still had access to the HMV Twitter feed. “@hmvtweets you need to go to ‘settings’ and revoke my account access as an admin. I’m still able to switch between accounts.”

The rather obvious lesson for employers in all of this: Take control of your social media accounts, change the passwords, and restrict access before you let go of the employees who run those accounts.

As for Poppy Rose, it’s not clear how her actions will affect her career. As I’ve written previously, at least in the U.S., in most cases it is legal to say disparaging things about your boss online, if you’re speaking on behalf of a group of employees and if your intention is to improve the conditions of your job. But in the vast majority of cases, it’s unwise to do so and damaging to your reputation. Of course Rose had already been let go, so some of those considerations were moot. What’s not clear is how her actions will affect her career in the future. It may be that no boss would want to hire an employee who would take actions that would so embarrass an employer. On the other hand, Rose has made it clear she understands the power of social media and how to wield it, a skill that many employers value.

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There is little difference between corporate and personal.As far as Twitter or Facebook go, its whoever owns the login info m that is the one who set up the acct regardless to who they represent, as they can pretty much do as they will once they are online, as shown by her having the acct after being laid off.

To be a truly covered corporate acct you would need to have someone in corporate own the acct, that is the login info , to which then you could allow an employee to access the acct and post for you with your password and then IF that employee were to attempt to change the credentials, the password, twitter and facebook send you an email alert to the owner acct. You can then say its not authorized and revoke it and still maintain ownership. If you ignore the alert, all an employee or other person can do is change the email addy and password and then basically hijack the acct . So keeping a corporate acct with a corporate password and email addy to a corporate employer account is the only actual safeguard you could use to prevent a SM manager from hijacking or using after they have already been terminated.

This way prior to terminating them, the corporate employer would have the needed access and authority to change the account password so the employee could no longer access the account and can then be terminated without fear of what could have been retaliation.

Susan, this very thing famously happened in our region several years ago. The company Twitter account tweeted “Want to buy a great company, cheap? $150,000, and we’ll throw in the Foos ball table for free.”

I quickly briefed regional clients who’d likely be called by the press as sources to alert them, but I needn’t have bothered – GigaOM picked up the story from the Tweet and by the time the 5:00 news rolled around the story had gone worldwide and was history. All over the single oversight of shutting down the password access to the company’s Twitter account…

Thanks so much for sharing this story Cheryl. I’m hearing more tales of companies failing to shut down ex-employees’ access to company social media accounts. Nothing bad happens when the departure is amicable but still, it seems like a very bad idea to leave the company open to unmonitored postings.

I’m curious about your story though. Was it a prank or an ex-employee with an axe to grind?

Susan, it was an ex employee who still had the login rights posting in the heat of emotion on their way out the door. The company became an unwitting poster child for bad execution (no pun intended, heheh). At 5 that evening the company issued a hasty press release that they reshaped the company as a strategy to pivot and expand, but at that point the release was such an obvious attempt to backpedal it was a joke.

Had they shut the account access down and handled the departures better- allowing the employees time to cool down, offering resources, and helping them understand how handling their transition professionally helps their ability to get re-hired quickly and even with the company’s support and help-it could have all been prevented. Instead, it’s a case study that will go down in history for social media run amok.

Yea, so was let go from my company almost a year ago and I still have all the admin rights to the Company Facebook account and twitter account. I have never been asked to turn them over and I really don’t know what to do with them. I haven’t posted in that time but I don’t know what to do. Any suggestions? They layed off everyone I knew at the company and I don’t know who to even contact.

Thanks for sharing this story. As I noted in response to Cheryl’s comment, this seems like a common practice — companies fail to shut down former employees’ ability to post on corporate social media accounts.

This is common because when companies let employees go or stop working with consultants they often don’t know how to remove access or change passwords. Unfortunately, we end up with their Facebook pages and Google Analytics still showing in our accounts with no way to remove ourselves.

Companies who choose to have social media accounts really need to make sure they have at least two employees who at least know how to revoke access and change passwords.

I think she will be fine in terms of jobs, besides, the word “Career” is such a capitalist word. You work yourself silly for an employer, and you help build them a business, only for them one day to the next to turn around and tell you that you are fired.

When you work for someone else, you just have a job or a role, not a “Career”. You only have a career when you start your own business, self employed etc…

quite conviniently HMV released the name of the employee to the press(they were taking their revenge) but I wonder with what ethical right have you used her name in your blog? So much for leadership and every aspect of it!!